Article By Nancy Day-Hendricks // EEW Magazine // Politics

(EEW Magazine Online) During the 2016 campaign, the black man Donald Trump enthusiastically branded “my African American” to the chagrin of most black folks, has officially quit the Republican Party over racism.

Gregory Cheadle, a 62-year-old California real estate broker, said he exited the GOP party because Trump and the party “have just shown that they have no interest in any other group but whites.”

In an interview with CNN anchor Don Lemon, Cheadle, who is now running for congress as an independent in California, said, “Whites are the primary group. Everyone else may get crumbs, but his whole agenda is targeted toward benefiting whites—and that [goes] for the GOP as well.”

Listing his complaints, Cheadle, who had been a member of the Republican party since 2001, said, “The GOP, they want to slash social security. They want to slash welfare, but they don’t say diddly squat about cutting subsidies, loan guarantees, lucrative government contracts and whatever else for the wealthy. And so, they’re all about themselves.”

White people are actually the biggest beneficiaries of welfare comprising 52 percent of recipients lifted from poverty by safety-net programs, while black people made up less than a quarter of that share. Also, Medicaid recipients are 43 percent white, 30 percent Hispanic, 18 percent African-American, and 9 percent other.

But his point is well taken.

A frustrated Cheadle, who told CNN he “joined the party to try to make a difference,” said he “fell in love with the history of the Republican party.”

But the aspiring politician said Trump went too far when he attacked Baltimore and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) in late July, referring to Cummings’ majority-black Baltimore district as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”

Before Cheadle grew disillusioned and jumped off the Trump train, he said he thought he could “bring awareness to the plight of black people, and just have the people join me in that, in trying to make a change. But the more I worked toward that end, the more resistance I was met with.”